Watership Down (Martin Rosen, 1978) is as controversial as it is beloved. Whether due to the tear-jerking hit song 'Bright Eyes' or its notorious representation of violence inflicted by and upon ...animated rabbits, the film retains the ability to move and shock audiences of all ages, remaining an important cultural touchstone decades after its original release. This open access collection unites scholars and practitioners from a diversity of perspectives to consider the ongoing legacy of this landmark of British cinema and animation history. The authors provide nuanced discussions of Watership Down’s infamous animated depictions of violence, death and its contentious relationship with child audiences, as well as examinations of understudied aspects of the film including its musical score, use of language, its increasingly relevant political and environmental themes and its difficult journey to the screen, complete with behind-the-scenes photographs, documents and production artwork. As the first substantial work on Watership Down, this book is a valuable companion on the film for scholars, students and fans alike. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.
What is the nature of the relationship between the Hollywood Western and American frontier mythology? How have Western films helped develop cultural and historical perceptions, attitudes and beliefs ...towards the frontier? Is there still a place for the genre in light of revisionist histories of the American West? Myth of the Western re-invigorates the debate surrounding the relationship between the Western and frontier mythology, arguing for the importance of the genre's socio-cultural, historical and political dimensions. Taking a number of critical-theoretical and philosophical approaches, Matthew Carter applies them to prominent forms of frontier historiography. He also considers the historiographic element of the Western by exploring the different ways in which the genre has responded to the issues raised by the frontier. Carter skilfully argues that the genre has - and continues to reveal - the complexities and contradictions at the heart of US society. With its clear analyses of and intellectual challenges to the film scholarship that has developed around the Western over a 65-year period, this book adds new depth to our understanding of specific film texts and of the genre as a whole - a welcome resource for students and scholars in both Film Studies and American Studies.
Spanish Horror Film Lazaro-Reboll, Antonio; Badley, Linda; Palmer, R. Barton
11/2012
eBook
Spanish Horror Film is the first in-depth exploration of the genre in Spain from the 'horror boom' of the late 1960s and early 1970s to the most recent production in the current renaissance of ...Spanish genre cinema, through a study of its production, circulation, regulation and consumption. The examination of this rich cinematic tradition is firmly located in relation to broader historical and cultural shifts in recent Spanish history and as an important part of the European horror film tradition and the global culture of psychotronia.Key Features: The first critical study on Spanish horror film to be published in English.An overview of key directors, cycles and representative films as well as of more obscure and neglected horror production.A detailed analysis of the work of directors such as Jesús Franco, Amando de Ossorio, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, Eloy de la Iglesia, Jaume Balagueró, Nacho Cerdá and Guillermo del Toro's Spanish" films.A focus on critical and cult contexts of reception in Spain
Science fiction film offers its viewers many pleasures, not least of which is the possibility of imagining other worlds in which very different forms of society exist. Not surprisingly, however, ...these alternative worlds often become spaces in which filmmakers and film audiences can explore issues of concern in our own society. Through an analysis of over thirty canonic science fiction (SF) films, including Logan's Run, Star Wars, Blade Runner, Back to the Future, Gattaca, and Minority Report, Black Space offers a thorough-going investigation of how SF film since the 1950s has dealt with the issue of race and specifically with the representation of blackness. Setting his study against the backdrop of America's ongoing racial struggles and complex socioeconomic histories, Adilifu Nama pursues a number of themes in Black Space. They include the structured absence/token presence of blacks in SF film; racial contamination and racial paranoia; the traumatized black body as the ultimate signifier of difference, alienness, and “otherness”; the use of class and economic issues to subsume race as an issue; the racially subversive pleasures and allegories encoded in some mainstream SF films; and the ways in which independent and extra-filmic productions are subverting the SF genre of Hollywood filmmaking. The first book-length study of African American representation in science fiction film, Black Space demonstrates that SF cinema has become an important field of racial analysis, a site where definitions of race can be contested and post-civil rights race relations (re)imagined.
Shakespeare and World Cinema radically re-imagines the field of Shakespeare on film, drawing on a wealth of examples from Africa, the Arctic, Brazil, China, France, India, Malaysia, Mexico, ...Singapore, Tibet, Venezuela, Yemen and elsewhere. Mark Thornton Burnett explores the contemporary significance of Shakespeare cinema outside the Hollywood mainstream for the first time, arguing that these adaptations are an essential part of the story of Shakespearean performance and reception. The book reveals in unique detail the scope, inventiveness and vitality of over seventy films that have undeservedly slipped beneath the radar of critical attention and also discusses regional Shakespeare cinema in Latin America and Asia. Utilising original interviews with filmmakers throughout, it introduces new auteurs, analyses multiple adaptations of plays such as Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet and pioneers fresh methodologies for understanding the role that Shakespeare continues to play in the international marketplace.
Beginning in the 1950s, "Euro Horror" movies materialized in astonishing numbers from Italy, Spain, and France and popped up in the US at rural drive-ins and urban grindhouse theaters such as those ...that once dotted New York's Times Square. Gorier, sexier, and stranger than most American horror films of the time, they were embraced by hardcore fans and denounced by critics as the worst kind of cinematic trash. In this volume, Olney explores some of the most popular genres of Euro Horror cinema-including giallo films, named for the yellow covers of Italian pulp fiction, the S&M horror film, and cannibal and zombie films-and develops a theory that explains their renewed appeal to audiences today.
This series presents diverse and fascinating movements in world cinema. Each volume concentrates on a set of films from a different national, regional or, in some cases, cross-cultural cinema which ...constitute a particular tradition.
